What Does CZ’s Pardon Mean for Crypto’s Reputation?

Panel reacts to CZ’s presidential pardon, its optics, political backlash, and potential impact on crypto credibility.

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Episode notes

Welcome to The Chopping Block — where crypto insiders Haseeb Qureshi, Tom Schmidt, Tarun Chitra, and Robert Leshner chop it up about the latest in crypto. This week, Kaledora Linn, Co-founder and “Empress of RWAs” at Ostium, joins to break down the rise of on-chain equity perps, the funding-rate chaos that hit 365%, and why she believes the next wave of tokenized assets won’t come from exchanges—but from structured liquidity markets.

We dive deep into Ostium’s hybrid CFD model that blends TradFi mechanics with on-chain transparency, explore why most retail traders can’t stomach perp carry costs, and debate what “safe leverage” could look like in an RWA world. The panel also touches on CZ’s presidential pardon and Coinbase’s new Echo platform, connecting the dots between political optics, capital formation, and how crypto’s product design is evolving beyond speculation.

Whether you’re building perpetual DEXs, tokenizing RWAs, or just trying to survive the next funding-rate spike, this episode unpacks how market design, UX, and regulation will shape crypto’s next trillion-dollar frontier.

Show highlights

🔹 Equity Perps, ADL, and UX Reality — Why funding swings as high as 365 percent make traditional perps unusable for mainstream traders, even if they work for short-term speculators.

🔹 Inside Ostium’s RWA Derivatives Model — Kaledora Linn explains how Ostium re-engineered perps into a CFD-style liquidity system to stabilize funding and attract institutional flow.

🔹 CFDs vs. Options — Why trillions in CFD volume dominate global retail markets and how a linear, simple payoff structure beats the complexity of options.

🔹 Market Microstructure and Path Dependence — How thin liquidity and whale-driven order books make on-chain equity markets fragile in early growth stages.

🔹 Funding-Rate Distortions — Tarun breaks down why “delta-neutral” strategies blow up when funding turns asymmetric and leverage resets too quickly.

🔹 From Perps to Products People Actually Use — Haseeb and Kaledora debate how to make RWAs tradeable without the hidden costs of perps.

🔹 Leveraged ETF Paradox — Despite structural decay, leverage products remain popular because of UX, accessibility, and clear narratives—lessons for on-chain builders.

🔹 Predictable Costs Win Power Users — Why whales and market makers prefer stable, knowable carry over yield-chasing chaos.

🔹 CZ Pardon and Optics — The panel dissects political fallout, public perception, and what “clemency for founders” means for crypto’s reputation.

🔹 Coinbase Echo Launch — A new experiment in on-chain crowd sales, retail capital formation, and the post-airdrop meta.

🔹 From Airdrops to Allocations — Why curated, paid token sales may replace “free money” farming to create long-term aligned communities.

🔹 MegaETH and Luxury Distribution Models — The “sorting hat” approach to allocation mirrors art galleries and luxury brands—scarcity and provenance as value signals.

🔹 Go-to-Market Over Purity — Tom and Robert argue that product distribution and user education matter more than perfect decentralization in early RWA markets.

Hosts:

⭐️Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner at Dragonfly

⭐️Robert Leshner, CEO & Co-founder of Superstate

⭐️Tarun Chitra, Managing Partner at Robot Ventures

⭐️Tom Schmidt, General Partner at Dragonfly

Guest

⭐️ Kaledora, Co-founder at Ostium

Timestamps

00:00 Intro

01:39 Kaldora’s Crypto Twitter Controversy

03:43 Debate on Perpetuals & Equities

07:20 Funding Rates & Market Dynamics